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Thank you! => But the fact that the statement IS tolerant is disgusting to me. It should be the standard for how people think and interact with each other on a daily basis. It shouldn't have to be labelled as tolerant. The average person is just so horrid at heart and understanding that what should be a regular attitude towards all beliefs other than your own is now classified as a rare opinion.

I totally agree, unfortunatly the world is not as nice as we want it to be.

Regardless, thank you for the respect. You can be certain it is mutual! ^_^

Anyway, folks, the following is a blog post with a video demonstrating one of the greatest qualities of science and reason, namely, that the logic and evidence of your argument is independent of any of your own personal qualities. It doesn't matter what your IQ is, how much schooling you've had, how old you are, where you're from, or what any of your other beliefs are: good arguments are good and bad ones bad.

And this is why we all ought to be thankful for (and do what we can to promote the spread of) education, open debate, and conversation between alternate ideas. Exposing our ideas to criticism, refining them when we can and discarding them when they fall flat, is our best hope of reaching truth.

Robin Williams
1951-2014"What's it gonna be? I don't know. But maybe along the way, you take my hand, tell a few jokes, and have some fun. C'mon, pal. You're not afraid, are ya?"

You're welcome! It makes me feel good to let others know that there are at least a FEW good Christians out there. I wish our town was like that, Profesco, the church that I go to had a sign like that, but the rest of the town is awful with the subject... I'm just glad that MY neighborhood knows how to treat such a now-a-days intolerable situation with consideration and thought, even if it is a small amount of people. A small amount of people means that we have the potential to grow and span out. As I like to say for most Christians, spread the love of the Word, not the hate of intolerance.

Last edited by Kinoyo; 24th November 2012 at 7:28 AM.
Reason: proofread errors

Aren't we ALL anti-theist when we're atheist? We're anti-religion because it's purposeless, hatemongering, war-starting and deceptive... amongst other reasons.

So what exactly is the difference?

Anti-theism is a much larger feature of the New Atheist movement than it is simple atheism. It's possible for someone to be a traditional atheist in that they simply don't happen to believe in any gods, but they very well could not care one bit if everyone else was theistic, and not have antipathy towards religion. For example, it's common (comparatively, anyway) for Jewish people to be atheistic while still having nothing but positive feelings towards and ties to the ritualistic/philosophical parts of their Judaism.

Anti-theism is also not necessarily the same as anti-religion. A person could be antagonistic towards organized religions and their industrialization of spirituality, but still find it possible to entertain general theistic beliefs.

Robin Williams
1951-2014"What's it gonna be? I don't know. But maybe along the way, you take my hand, tell a few jokes, and have some fun. C'mon, pal. You're not afraid, are ya?"

An Atheist group? I'm Christian myself, but I won't look down on anybody that isn't my religion. That makes me so upset, and sometimes embarrassed to be a Christian, especially when it even says directly from our Bible "Thou shall not force religion". I won't go off on everybody for having their own beliefs. I'm glad a group like this exists, an open group that usually would get so much hatred spewed at them. I would like people to convert, sure, but I wouldn't go so far as to hate people that don't/keep on pushing it. People believe in what they think is right, and that's how it should stay. So in regard to stereotypical Christians or other religious groups in general, keep on fighting the good fight!

If only more Christian's were like you I'd still be one. Don't get me wrong, I love the positive messages, I have my other reasons for not specifically being Christian.

Sorry, I've veen gone everyone, but work, has been busy, and has had a lot of Pokemon stuff going on (Game store that also sales cards and all kinds of stuff) and well being the only Pokemon player lot of the work falls on me, but on the plus side, over 100 grand worth of stuff and I get at least a 10% cut of that

For Christmas, I'll take some time off to mess with my new things and spend time with my girlfriend. As always, getting off from school is the biggest stress reliever there is, I'll be much more relaxed instead of tense. This is hypocritical for a person like me, but I celebrate Christmas as a happy time, no matter what, of the year, not His birthday. It's the time where if someone close to you died, you lost/broke up with someone, etc, it's the time you can look at everything else and notice "Hey, it's not so bad."

On another subject, the reason why I posted here in the first place is my hope to FIX the problems I stated the world has, I believe a big patch to that hole is diversity and getting to communicate with someone that has other opinions. Me and my girlfriend are bronies after all, we can tolerate other views, so something like this comes as no new task to us. Now, of course, trying to communicate to an intolerant, close-minded person isn't going to get you anywhere. If you try to base everything off of what one source says, you're the most biased person there is. And usually you're hypocritical in all of the things you say, which I try to avoid. That's the main reason, the other reason is like I said before, to show the community that there still ARE good Christians, just to put some hope back into mentalities of this thread. After all, hope and joy IS the theme of the season. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Thank you for those words. I respect my families views on Christianity. My dad gave up alcohol and started to become a minister. I'm proud he found something to better his life. However my choice to not follow any specific religion is much deeper than just being intolerant, or plain non believing. I'd had to shove my own opinion down anyone's throats so I won't list those specific reasons now. I do believe people need to just cool it a few degrees, suck up their pride, and talk. The world really would be better, and we don't all have to follow the same religion either. It's all about seeing the similarities between us rather than the differences. Once we see those similarities, then we can truly understand why another person thinks and feels the way they do, without losing sense of ourselves.

As of what I'm doing for Christmas! My mom asked my fiance and I to go to her and her boyfriends house.........not looking forward to it. Long story short, mom is impulsive, been married legally in the US 3 times, (once over seas...) She met the last husband when I met my fiance. Married him right away, and now she's divorcing him, and already moved on to a new guy. Because of things like this, my fiance seriously disrespects her (not to her face thankfully) and is really grumpy when we are around her. Personally, I'm just not looking forward to meet yet ANOTHER family.

In order to stop us from falling off the last page of clubs, how about I present a challenge to you guys? I'd like to see how everyone answers an argument for the existence of God. If you guys enjoy it, we can even do more of them. =)

This one's called the Kalam cosmological argument; it's a slight twist on the traditional cosmological (or "first cause") argument.

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
4) Nothing that begins to exist can cause itself to begin to exist; the cause must be external to that thing.
5) The only thing external to the universe is God.
6) Therefore, God caused the universe.

You guys can address as much or as little of the argument as you like, whether it's a full refutation or just pointing out a problem with one premise. Have at it!

Robin Williams
1951-2014"What's it gonna be? I don't know. But maybe along the way, you take my hand, tell a few jokes, and have some fun. C'mon, pal. You're not afraid, are ya?"

The fact that it makes an assumption that god must exist because it's simply an alternative of some sort means the Kalam is yet another feeble arguement without basis and is thusly constructed by fail!

Anyways, Christmas... let's not even bring up the BS that is the Solstace doomsday, but still Christmas... I hate it!

In order to stop us from falling off the last page of clubs, how about I present a challenge to you guys? I'd like to see how everyone answers an argument for the existence of God. If you guys enjoy it, we can even do more of them. =)

This one's called the Kalam cosmological argument; it's a slight twist on the traditional cosmological (or "first cause") argument.

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
4) Nothing that begins to exist can cause itself to begin to exist; the cause must be external to that thing.
5) The only thing external to the universe is God.
6) Therefore, God caused the universe.

You guys can address as much or as little of the argument as you like, whether it's a full refutation or just pointing out a problem with one premise. Have at it!

1. Energy cant be destroyed it can only be re-directed and stored.
2. Everything evolved from the most basic form of anything, pure energy.
3. Pure energy must have gained a collective consciousness to imbue that consciousness into atoms and or groups of them
4. The first being through a collective energy formed a consciousness.
5. The first being multiplied. Perhaps the story very few know of called: divine suicide, ( detonated itself to experience death)
6. from the original realm in which that consciousness and being still exists, all things extended outwards from the alternate points of "zero" and were made additions to them.

All things are built upon pure energy and although this is not 100% confirmed, string theory theorizes this through a logical expression of reasoning. One could even theorize the existence of the soul through smiler implications to that logic, by saying, that through the accumulation of the various forms of energy in which extended out of the original source, parts of it could form a separate collective consciousness while yet still being part of the original whole because of our own energies composition.

Last edited by Celestial Moth; 19th December 2012 at 12:16 AM.
Reason: Edit

In order to stop us from falling off the last page of clubs, how about I present a challenge to you guys? I'd like to see how everyone answers an argument for the existence of God. If you guys enjoy it, we can even do more of them. =)

This one's called the Kalam cosmological argument; it's a slight twist on the traditional cosmological (or "first cause") argument.

1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
4) Nothing that begins to exist can cause itself to begin to exist; the cause must be external to that thing.
5) The only thing external to the universe is God.
6) Therefore, God caused the universe.

You guys can address as much or as little of the argument as you like, whether it's a full refutation or just pointing out a problem with one premise. Have at it!

This was my previous post with now some additions.

1. Energy cant be destroyed it can only be re-directed and stored.
2. Everything evolved from the most basic form of anything, pure energy.
3. Pure energy must have gained a collective consciousness to imbue that consciousness into atoms and or groups of them
4. The first being through a collective energy formed a consciousness.
5. The first being multiplied. Perhaps the story very few know of called: divine suicide, ( detonated itself to experience death)
6. from the original realm in which that consciousness and being still exists, all things extended outwards from the alternate points of "zero" and were made additions to them.

All things are built upon pure energy and although this is not 100% confirmed, string theory theorizes this through a logical expression of reasoning. One could even theorize the existence of the soul through smiler implications to that logic, by saying, that through the accumulation of the various forms of energy in which extended out of the original source, parts of it could form a separate collective consciousness while yet still being part of the original whole because of our own energies composition.

We all have the potential to expand our own state of consciousness to evolve and the state of consciousness in which grows only due to knowledge is what furthers evolution beyond what some can perceive. Its this very evolution in which has giving beings the knowledge and or evolutionary trait to survive what some consider to be un-survivable. By which I'm refer to the death of our material bodies. But the very scientific and unmovable principle, that says energy can not be destroyed it can only be re-directed and stored, suggests that those with the evolutionary traits could in fact further evolve theirs self's into a form in which some could perceive as an inter-dimensional state of existence. Because of the logical expression in which i have provided earlier, which is that, our consciousness and or spirit is made up of a collective pure dimensionless form of energy it is virtually uncontainable.
This is by no means a farfetched concept, though it is an ignored one.
The first being within existence( god ) evolved its own energy in a similar manner. Whom could have only further evolved it's self due to the inconceivable amount of time which it could have only been contained by.
Some beings have managed through the teachings of the many divine paths, to further their evolution and project their own spirit and energy into planes and dimensions in which were created through an addition and or link to the "zero" point of energy and or the original alternate plane of reality in which we exist in. The link and or realms and dimensions that the first being branched of and into due to the dimensionless properties of evolved energy in which can travel through dimensions.

This could only ever be considered nonsense by the ludicrous because it was Charles Darwin himself, who suggested that time will give beings the evolutionary traits to survive due to their own strengths and weaknesses. A simple and logical addition to that summary is that, some beings ,including the first one, have gained the knowledge and or evolutionary traits to survive and or further evolve their self's through the transition between material existences. The transition in which we all undergo, and due to the constant degrading,rebuilding and evolution of our material bodies. This movement and or evolution is simply produced/acted on because of the knowledge possessed by the spirit whom has such a high state of awareness and consciousness that they their selfs are aware and able to choose an existence, or to project their selfs beyond this state of existence and reality. Due to the dimensionless nature of all energy.